At some point over the past four decades or so athletes created a picture in their mind of what carb loading looks like. And that image became a big bowl of pasta the night before a race. In reality, effective carb loading for any endurance event, much less triathlon, is much more involved than this. First of all, why do we “load” carbs prior to a race? The reason is because of glycogen. Glycogen is the most accessible store of energy in the body. Glycogen is what you’ll be burning as fuel during a triathlon. When you eat something like pizza, most of the carbohydrates from that pizza get stored as glycogen in your body. Thus, eat pizza the day…